Prince Harry has this week joined the parenting industry. Speaking at a mental health event in Melbourne, the Duke of Sussex told an audience that all children deserve better. New parents, he argued, should be an “upgrade” on their own mother and father, even when their upbringing has been perfectly happy.

This relentless push for improvement is not benign. It erodes parents’ peace of mind, undermines their confidence, and leaves many convinced they are failing against impossible standards. The overarching culture now treats parents as the authors of their children’s lives; when a child struggles, a diagnosis is sought or blame assigned.

Parents matter, but not to the extent now claimed. Previous generations tended to have more children — in Britain, fertility fell from around 2.9 children per woman in the mid-Sixties to roughly 1.44 today — and so it was perhaps easier to accept that some kids might go off the rails somewhat. Now people choose carefully when to have children, and typically have fewer of them. Parenting has become a lifestyle choice, with the built-in premise that children will improve their parents’ lives. The result is project parenting, where adults carefully curate and shape their children.

Yet human beings cannot be perfected through technique. Rather, we are shaped by forces no parent, however diligent, can control. Prince Harry lost his mother at the age of 12. His grief was then played out on a global stage, while an intense public battle raged over who was to blame. Relentless press scrutiny, alongside well-documented strains within his own family, would have tested any child. No approach, not even the reassuring promises of “gentle parenting”, could have shielded him from such pressures.

Harry’s life illustrates the limits of parental influence. Yet modern psychology has moved in the opposite direction. From Sigmund Freud onwards, it has traded on the idea that if only our parents had got their approach right, we would not now be spending endless hours in therapy tracing our problems back to childhood.

While parenting matters, meta-analyses suggest its effects are typically modest, explaining only a limited share of variation in child outcomes. The impacts of society, living conditions, schooling and friendships are all underestimated. Yet in a bid to convince ourselves that outcomes can be controlled, we continue to seek the Goldilocks approach to parenting in the hope that this will ensure children grow into well-adjusted, happy adults. Rather than accept these limits, we turn to parenting theory in an attempt to control what cannot be controlled.

Since 1946, when Benjamin Spock published The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, the parenting industry has expanded rapidly. From Jean Liedloff’s emphasis on constant closeness to Penelope Leach’s indulgent attentiveness and the Sears’ attachment parenting, intensive parental involvement is the consistent message.

In practice, however, these approaches demand an intensity of commitment that is difficult to sustain. The insidious message that adults must remain constantly engaged to avoid harming their child sits uneasily with the reality that exhausted, harried and anxious parents are unlikely to raise happy children.

Contemporary advice often contradicts itself, further undermining parents’ confidence. There is conscious parenting, where adults are instructed to remain calm and a reassuring presence, no matter the behaviour. Free-range parenting suggests that this level of intensity is unnecessary, while helicopter parenting demands the opposite, requiring mothers and fathers to hover over their children with strict routines and high engagement. This flood of so-called expertise fosters competition between parents, leaving them wondering: “Am I getting it right, or are they? Because one of us is damaging their child.”

Increasingly, the well-meaning parenting industry is producing anxious, over-cautious mothers and fathers searching for the holy grail, the one method that will get it right. In some ways, parenting has probably improved as a result of all this advice. Parents have been found to be more empathic and attentive on average, and they are much more likely to be connected to their children. But these gains have arguably come at a cost, with both parents and children often more stressed.

If there is a task for this generation, it is not to perfect parenting approaches but to recover a sense of proportion. Parents are limited in their capacity to shape their children. They would be better off putting more effort into enjoying family life than trying to turn out perfect specimens of humanity.

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Stella O’Malley is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She is Founder-Director of Genspect, an international organisation that advocates for a healthy approach to sex and gender.

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